URBAN POLITICAL ECONOMY: INTRODUCTION

I used to think that what was needed was to bring the mountain people into the “economic mainstream.” I thought it would be possible to do this and still preserve some of the positive, humanizing qualities of mountain cultures. I no longer think that is either possible or desirable. Our challenge is not to join mainstream America. It is to recreate (and) renew … what the mountains have always been … an alternative to mainstream America. This alternative is nearer to being absorbed today than it has ever been in the past. The task before us is to renew this alternative and endow it with the capabilities it will need to survive in late Twentieth Century America. (Mike Smathers, Mountain Life and Work , February, 1973, p. 19).